Thus also said God to Noah, and to his sons with him: “Behold I will establish my covenant with you, and with your seed after you. And with every living soul that is with you, as well in all birds as in cattle and beasts of the earth, that are come forth out of the ark, and in all the beasts of the earth. I will establish my covenant with you, and all flesh will be no more destroyed with the waters of a flood, neither will there be from henceforth a flood to waste the earth.” And God said: “This is the sign of the covenant which I give between me and you, and to every living soul that is with you, for perpetual generations. I will set my bow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of a covenant between me, and between the earth. And when I will cover the sky with clouds, my bow will appear in the clouds: And I will remember my covenant with you, and with every living soul that bears flesh: and there will no more be waters of a flood to destroy all flesh. And the bow will be in the clouds, and I will see it and will remember the everlasting covenant that was made between God and every living soul of all flesh which is upon the earth.” And God said to Noah: “This will be the sign of the covenant which I have established between me and all flesh upon the earth.” And the sons of Noah who came out of the ark were Sem, Cham and Japheth: and Cham is the father of Canaan. These three are the sons of Noah: and from these was all mankind spread over the whole earth. And Noah, a husbandman, began to till the ground and planted a vineyard. And drinking of the wine was made drunk and was uncovered in his tent. Which when Cham the father of Canaan had seen, to wit, that his father’s nakedness was uncovered, he told it to his two brethren without. But Sem and Japheth put a cloak upon their shoulders, and going backward, covered the nakedness of their father: and their faces were turned away, and they saw not their father’s nakedness. And Noah awaking from the wine, when he had learned what his younger son had done to him, said: “Cursed be Canaan, a servant of servants will he be to his brethren.” And he said: “Blessed be the Lord God of Sem, be Canaan his servant. May God enlarge Japheth, and may he dwell in the tents of Sem, and Canaan be his servant.” And Noah lived after the flood three hundred and fifty years: And all his days were in the whole nine hundred and fifty years: and he died.Thanks be to God.
Dom Prosper Guéranger:
God promised Noah that He would never more punish the Earth with a Deluge. But in His justice He has many times visited the sins of men with a scourge which, in more senses than one, bears a resemblance to a Deluge: the invasion of enemies. We meet with these invasions in every age and each time we see the hand of God. We can trace the crimes that each of them was sent to punish, and in each we find a manifest proof of the infinite justice with which God governs the world.
It is not requisite that we should here mention the long list of these revolutions which we might almost say make up the history of mankind, for in its every page we read of conquests, extinction of races, destruction of nations and violent amalgamations which effaced the traditions and character of the several peoples that were thus forced into union. We will confine our considerations to the two great invasions which the just anger of God has permitted to come upon the world since the commencement of the Christian era.
The Roman Empire had made itself as pre-eminent in crime as it was in power. It conquered the world and then corrupted it. Idolatry and immorality were the civilisation it gave to the nations which had come under its sway. Christianity could save individuals in the great Empire, but the Empire itself could not be made Christian. God let loose upon it the deluge of Barbarians. The stream of the wild invasion rose to the very dome of the Capitol. The Empire was engulfed. The ruthless ministers of Divine Justice were conscious of their being chosen for this mission of vengeance, and they gave themselves the name of “God’s Scourge.”
When, later on, the Christian Nations of the East had lost the Faith which they themselves had transmitted to the Western World — when they had disfigured the sacred Symbol of Faith by their blasphemous heresies — the anger of God sent upon them from Arabia the deluge of Mahometanism. It swept away the Christian Churches that had existed from the very times of the Apostles. Jerusalem, the favoured Jerusalem on which Jesus had lavished His tenderest love, even she became a victim to the infidel hordes. Antioch and Alexandria, with their Patriarchates were plunged into the vilest slavery, and at length Constantinople that had so obstinately provoked the divine indignation was made the very Capital of the Turkish Empire.
And we, the Western nations, if we return not to the Lord our God, will we be spared? Will the floodgates of Heaven’s vengeance — will the torrent of fresh Vandals — ever be menacing to burst upon us yet never come? Where is the country of our own Europe that has not corrupted its way as in the days of Noah? That has not made conventions against the Lord and against His Christ? (Psalm ii. 2) That has not clamoured out that old cry of revolt: “Let us break their bonds asunder, let us cast away their yoke from us”? (Psalm ii. 3) Well may we fear, lest the time is at hand when, despite our haughty confidence in our means of defence, Christ our Lord to whom all nations have been given by the Father, will rule us with a rod of iron and break us in pieces like a potter’s vessel? (Psalm ii. 9). Let us propitiate the anger of our offended God and follow the inspired counsel of the Royal Prophet: “Serve the Lord with fear. Embrace the discipline of His Law lest, at any time, the Lord be angry, and you perish from the just way” (Psalm ii. 13)
